Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Me and Father Joe

His
name was Martin Joseph O'Looney, a Paulist priest. We met him back in 1953,
when my mother decided to become a Catholic.

I'm not sure how she happened to choose Old
St. Mary's church for instructions, as it was not our local parish, but she
went to OSM and took instruction from Fr. Joe.

The church was in Chinatown, across the
street from a park, so she would leave Karen and me in the park (boy, you
sure wouldn't do that today) and meet with Fr. Joe for an hour in the
rectory and then pick us up.

I don't remember the first time we met him.
I was 10, Karen was 6. He took one look at cute little Karen and
thought she was greatest thing since sliced bread. Fat me? I was
chopped liver. That kind of defined our relationship my whole life.

He baptised my mother and attended the dinner
my godmother threw for her, coming dressed in his priestly collar (he hated
wearing it, but realized my godmother was very prim and proper). The
only thing I remember about that dinner was Joe and Karen huddled together
laughing about putting olives on their fingers. I think my godmother was
scandalized.

My parents became an active part of his
social group. They met frequently for parties, often at our house.
The group loved to sing and Fr. Joe had a gorgeous voice and I loved to lie
in bed and listen to the laughter and music going on in the living room.
I think of him whenever I hear "There's a long, long trail a-winding," which
can't possibly be sung without harmony.

We enjoyed getting together with his sister
and her family and we occasionally vacationed together, along with Fr. Joe.
Karen and I and her kids put on terrible plays that we charged the adults to
come and watch.

Joe was kind of a renegade and did his own thing, over
and above what was going on with the rest of the priests, though he
remained a Paulist. He gave great sermons and had a large
following, so though the church hierarchy didn't know quite what to do
with him, he remained a Paulist.

When
I was in high school, he joined the Navy and served on the USS
Kearsarge, an air craft carrier. Whenever the ship hit San
Francisco, he would come by our house to visit.

I remember when he had been in Japan and brought my
mother a beautiful set of Noritaki china. Though I had no
emotional attachment to it, it was sad to give it away when we moved my
mother to Atria.

When he left the Navy, he came to the Newman Center at
Berkeley, where he spent several years. When he arrived, I was the
only person he knew so I became the person responsible for everything he
found wrong about the center.

My "chopped liver" status continued.

But everyone loved him, He had that Irish
personality, a twinkle in his eye and a taste for fun. He also was
dedicated to his special causes. He founded "Amigos Anonymous"
during his Newman apostolate in Berkeley. For eight years in the 1960's,
groups of dedicated college students of all faiths from various colleges
spent their summers in Central Mexico working with the poor. Their
projects varied widely—starting an elementary school, organizing a
renters' association, conducting vaccination programs, coaching kids in
basketball, forming discussion groups, etc. The spirit of service
continued through the Amigos Anonymous Scholarship Program in a small
town in the state of Guanajuato where the Amigos originally worked. The
program supports students whose families are too poor to send them to
school. It was still in operation at the time of Joe's death.

He always wanted me to be involved, but I resisted.
(It took several years after his death (at 88) in 2006 when I was
finally able to get off of their mailing list)

When my sister died, he presided at her funeral, but I
have no memory of that.

He and I butted heads over two funerals. For my
father's funeral, I wanted there to be a recording of my father playing
a couple of his compositions on the piano in the background as exit
music, but he stopped everything and said that Beverly wanted everyone
to hear these and made everyone sit there and listen to the music before
he dismissed us. It was a small thing, but indicative of how he
never listened to me.

When David died, I reluctantly asked him to do the
service and he said that since David had died while driving drunk he
wanted to give the kids in the audience a lecture on safe driving.
I asked him not to do it. He did anyway. Jeri didn't want to
play the clarinet for the service, but he made her get up and do it.
And then when the service was over, he was angry with me because I
expected him to go to the cemetery with us to do the graveside services.
He had a party to go to. But my mother got him to go and he
reluctantly did. When Paul died, I did NOT want him anywhere near
the service (our friend David Gerrold, who had a mail-in minister's
license did it beautifully and my friend Olivia spent the whole
afternoon blocking Joe from getting near me!)

When my mother left my father, after 35 years of
marriage, to marry Fred, Father Joe offered to get her an annulment of
her marriage to my father based on the conditions of their marriage.
She declined and just lived in sin for the next 18 years.

As he got older, he sort of moved away from a parish
and lived with his sister and her family (her husband became my father's
best friend). He had dinner with my mother a couple of times a week.
He showed up with a bag of food for her to cook for him, and sat there
drinking while she did. On more than one occasion, she feared for
his safety when he got into a car, but she never said anything. He
eventually moved into a rest home near her house. He had lost the
ability to communicate when he finally died, which is a shame because
communication was his strongest skill.

He was most noted for the very long letters he would
send out at Christmas commenting, from a very liberal perspective, on
affairs of Church and state and especially on social justice concerns.
In 1993, for example, he wrote: "As once more this itinerant hermit
takes pen in hand to assemble this annual Christmas epistle ‘to the
scattered troops', there comes the temptation to cop out. Last year's
long-winded document was received with general approval. Even my
right-wing critical correspondents conceded that it was my best and
suggested that ‘I quit when I'm ahead.' I'll resist the temptation. It
has been a busy and confusing year. Etc, etc" (I copied that from
his obituary)

We received copies of his old Christmas sermons for
years after he died, and I'm glad they have finally stopped coming.

He was a very big presence throughout my whole life,
yet I have no emotional feelings about him whatsoever. Kind of
like my father.